The technology relates to a vehicle traveling control apparatus that generates a target route along which an own vehicle is to travel and controls follow-up traveling to follow the target route.
A follow-up traveling control for a vehicle such as an automobile has been known. In the follow-up traveling control, a traveling lane of an own vehicle and a preceding vehicle in front of the own vehicle are detected by means of a camera or a radar, for example. On the basis of the detections, an inter-vehicle distance from the own vehicle to the preceding vehicle is controlled; a position of the own vehicle within the traveling lane is controlled to a proper distance; and follow-up traveling to follow the target route is controlled using, as a trajectory, a middle position of a lane as well as a middle position of the preceding vehicle. In the follow-up traveling control, a steering angle is controlled to allow the position of the own vehicle to coincide with a control target point of the target route, and a traveling trajectory of the own vehicle is controlled to vary in following the target route.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2000-20896 discloses a technique of performing a traveling control. In the technique of the traveling control, a traveling control is performed to follow a middle line of the lane when lane lines on a road are detectable, whereas a traveling control is performed to follow the middle position of the preceding vehicle when the lane lines are hidden by the preceding vehicle and thus undetectable. In JP-A No. 2000-20896, when it is determined from map information that there is a possibility that the preceding vehicle may turn right or left during the follow-up traveling to follow the preceding vehicle, a control gain is decreased. Further, the follow-up control is attenuated upon presumption of meandering from lateral positional variation of the preceding vehicle to thereby reduce inadequate behavioral variation in the own vehicle.